Bedrock Robotics Lands $600 Million to Put Autonomous Excavators on More Job Sites

Bedrock Robotics has raised $600 million in a Series C round that values the company at $4.1 billion, TechCrunch reported on October 26. For a startup founded only in 2024, the round marks one of the fastest climbs in the young market for autonomous construction equipment.

The round was co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital. It brings Bedrock's total funding to nearly $1 billion, according to TechCrunch, and arrives about two months after the company moved its self driving excavators out of testing and onto active construction sites.

A Retrofit Kit for Heavy Machines

Bedrock does not build excavators. Instead, it has developed a self driving kit that can be retrofitted onto existing construction and worksite vehicles, which lets contractors keep the machines they already own.

That approach is now in commercial use. TechCrunch reported that Bedrock equipped excavators are operating at a water treatment facility in Nevada, at an earthwork site run by Champion Site Prep in Texas, and on a 1.2 million cubic yard civil sitework project with Zachry Construction Corporation.

The company's newest partner is Haydon, an Arizona based general contractor that plans to use Bedrock equipped machines on projects that include advanced manufacturing facilities, water and wastewater plants, data centers and healthcare facilities.

A Founding Team From Waymo and Anki

The founders bring long experience in autonomy. Co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman previously led Waymo's self driving trucks program, which has since been shut down, and before that co-founded and led Anki, the maker of the Cozmo consumer robot, which closed in 2019.

His co-founders include Waymo veterans Kevin Peterson, now chief technology officer, and Ajay Gummalla, vice president of engineering and infrastructure. Tom Eliaz, who previously worked at Segment and Twilio, is also a co-founder and serves as vice president of engineering and hardware.

"We have proven that fully autonomous excavators can perform real work of value alongside the crews and workflows already in place on job sites," Sofman said in a statement. "The next challenge is delivering that capability to more contractors as a dependable part of how projects get built."

The Labor Gap Behind the Bet

Bedrock's focus on excavators is tied to a workforce problem. According to the company, it takes five years or more to master operating an excavator, and many experienced operators are nearing retirement. TechCrunch cited an estimate from Associated Builders and Contractors, a national trade association, that more than 40% of construction workers will retire within the next five years.

The startup is betting that contractors will increasingly turn to autonomy to close that gap. Rather than replacing crews outright, Sofman's pitch is that the machines work alongside the people and processes already on a site.

Who Is Backing the Round

New investors in the Series C include the US Innovative Technology Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners and Temasek. Existing backers 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital and Nvidia also took part, according to TechCrunch.

Bedrock says the money will help it move faster into commercial work by deploying its technology at more sites and growing the field teams and infrastructure needed to support customers. The company also announced two executive hires: Amy Jones Satrom, a veteran of Amazon, Nuro and Uber, as vice president of operations, and Lando Juarez, formerly head of legal for Uber's autonomous mobility and delivery business, as general counsel.

Lessons for Founders

Bedrock's story offers a few takeaways for builders. The team chose a narrow, high value use case instead of trying to automate every machine at once. It sold a retrofit rather than asking customers to replace expensive fleets. And it tied its pitch to a measurable industry pain point, the shortage of skilled operators.

The harder phase starts now. Proving a machine can dig on a few sites is different from supporting fleets for many contractors every day. With $600 million in fresh capital and a team built for scale, Bedrock now has the resources to show whether autonomous excavation can become a routine part of how the industry builds.